By Mike Ebonugwo

It was obviously another day that held no promise of freedom for me. And once again I sought solace in sleep, believing by so doing to block the invasive thoughts spawned by the shocking reality of my predicament and which have been threatening to suffocate me. But sleep, O traitorous sleep, had betrayed me once more. My dreamy flight from the present had nothing for me but a panorama of nightmarish spectres and sinister predators assailing me with chilling howls, reminiscent of tortured souls in fiendship captivity.

Jolted back to reality, the reality of my detention cell for the past three months, I was drawn to contemplate my surroundings once again: The makeshift wooden camp beds on the floor, the human waste disposal container, the general filthiness of the place and the cloying, stagnant stench that marks you. How I was able to survive all these for three months still remains a mystery to me, though each passing day of that nightmarish experience I will rather consign to oblivion.

Mary & Joseph

While I was thus ruminating about the disorienting misfortune of my present, an amazing thing happened. A Christmas carol which was coming from an adjoining building to our place of confinement, and which until then had been drowned by the chattering din of my cell mates, suddenly began to filter into the cell through cracks on its walls. As usual, I could not resist its enchanting melody.

The song is the very popular “Mary’s Boy Child”. It instantly brought tears welling up my eyes, and involuntarily I found myself caressing my tummy; a rapidly protruding tummy whose clinically confirmed tiny human inhabitant was once enthusiastically envisaged as sure to hasten my journey to the altar in the company of my heartthrob, Joseph Odinkalu.

Many months after, things had gone terrible sour and my world had evaporated into an unending nightmare. The bizarre twist of events that brought me to this cruel fate had since continued to haunt me, leaving painful scares in my memory. And since I could not find peace in sleep, I could not help but lose myself in the reverie of the mystifying process that brought me here.

I met Joseph for the first time while working in the computer division of his father’s group of companies. A few week before this meeting, I was temporarily seconded to serve as personal assistant to the Chairman, Chief Don Alili Odinkalu, as the lady holding that position was then on study vacation. One Friday afternoon I sat relaxed in front of my table, happy in the thought that there would be no visitor traffic that day as the chairman usually do not receive visitors on Fridays, except on special arrangement. But about 2pm a tall, powerfully built young man swaggered into my office and demanded in what sounded like an authoritative voice to see ‘Chief’.

He was dressed in stretch jeans trousers that clung tightly to his muscular thighs and calves. He also had on a garishly designed T-shirt with “TEXAS” embossed on it. But more disturbing to me still was the prominent ear-ring he stuck to his left ear. So without hesitation, I told him Chief was too busy to see anybody, and that he should try his luck any other day, except Friday, after confirming his appointment in advance.

But much to my annoyance, he casually ignored my dismissal speech, walked boldly to the visitors waiting couch and sat down, lordly at ease and grinning at my frown of disapproval. “Look here little lady,” he told me, “forget your little troubles and go in there and tell Chief that JC is back and will like to see him.” I hesitated for a moment before brushing into the office to tell my boss about the insolent young man lounging in my office, hoping he would summon the ever-alert security men to throw him out.

But the very moment I mentioned JC and the description that went with that absurd initial, a sudden transformation took place in my boss. He got up with an agility that belied his bulk and bustled out of his office into the visitors waiting room. I was confronted by a greater amazement when I found them in a tight hug of mutual happiness of sudden re-union, shuffling themselves this way and that.

It was only after this that he introduced his strange visitor to me as his son. “He has been in America for many years now, studying,” he told me, beaming proudly with smiles and backslapping the young man affectionately in the process. And in an afterthought, he added: “Joseph, this is Mary; she has been taking care of my office these past weeks.

That was my first encounter with Joseph. I learnt later that arrangement had been concluded for him to take over the computer division of his father’s group of companies. Many saw this development as a possible way to groom Joseph, an only son, to replace his father whenever he retired as the chairman of the entire group.

This was the least of my concern at the time. But it became my concern a week after he assumed office as Managing Director of Odin Computers. I got a letter from the Personnel Manager assigning me to the post of personal assistant/secretary to the new MD. I was asked to report for duty the following day.

I considered the development with a mixture of high expectation and slight trepidation. Sure, I will be working under a chief executive and enjoy the perquisite that sometimes come with that position, but the fear of the unknown continued to tug at my mind.Will he be a hostile boss on account of the unfriendly drama that characterised our first meeting? I asked myself.

So it was with a heart that trembled with conflicting emotions that I reported for duty in his office for the first time. When I was officially presented to him by the personnel manager, he had given me a mischivious grin and mockingly chided the personnel manager for assigning him a sharp-clawed little tigress to frighten his visitors away.

Looking quite impressive in his well-cut suit and other matching accessories to his dressing, he was all debonair and addressed me in a teasing voice that immediately gave me the impression that he must have arranged for me to work with him.

Our working relationship started off on impersonal, professional level. I tried as much as possible to discharge my duties with efficient detachment. Things continued this way for some time. But one Friday, just a few minute before the official closing time, he called me into his office and asked me to sit down.”Look here Mary,” he said, using my name for the first time. “I think I owe you an apology, though belated, for the ungentlemanly way I behaved towards you the first time we met. And to make up for it, I’m inviting you out to a cossy little restaurant I frequent every Friday”.

”O, you have nothing to apologise for,” I stammered. “Honestly, I have forgotten all about it,” I added. But he assured me it would be his pleasure if I could come, and taking my silence for assent, he added: “If it is all the same with you, I will pick you up at home at 7pm.”

Unknown to me at the time, that was to be the beginning of a regular Friday night date for us.And what he called a cossy little restaurant turned out to be a high class restaurant catering and pandering to the exotic tastes of the supper rich. But the big revelation of our weekly date at the restaurant was Joseph himself. Though the waiters would treat him like royalty, he appeared to have no eye for any one but me. He overwhelmed me with attention and dazzled me with anecdotes of his experiences in America.

By the fourth Friday of our regular night date, I was totally captivated by his personality and manifest affection that normal office working relationship became almost impossible because of the tell-tale signs of mutual love we exhibited anytime we were together. By this time I was already visiting his home on a regular basis.Two months after our relationship began I missed my period and later had a clinical confirmation of my being pregnant.

This information caused me both fear and happiness. Fear that Joseph might react unfavourably to the news, and happiness that I was carrying his baby.

I chose one of our Friday night date to break the news to him. He clearly surprised me. He was so over-joyed that he dragged me home immediately, saying this called for special celebration. He invited some friends over and there was drinking and general hilarity.

But my biggest surprise was yet to come. On Sunday, he took me to his family’s sprawling mansion at Ikoyi and presented me to his parents and other immediate kins as his bride-to-be. The engagement, he said, would be announced shortly. There was a brief, uneasy silence, then the congratulations started pouring in.

I savoured the euphoria of it all, especially the prospect of marrying into the powerful and enormously wealthy family of the Odinkalus. But I was also uncomfortable with the nagging suspicion that the Odinkalus were not really happy at my choice as their prospective daughter in-law. My suspicion grew in intensity when I heard it rumoured that Joseph was already engaged to a lady chosen by the family. When I confronted Joseph with this, he dismissed it as one of those arrangements parents make for their children, more for business considerations, adding that the resulting marriage is usually devoid of compatibility, love and happiness. “Chioma and I have nothing in common,” he assured me.

I decided to leave the matter at that. Three months later he asked me to move into his house so that he could take proper care of me. Two months after I started living with him, he came in one evening to tell me that his parents had advised that all wedding plans be shelved until the delivery of my baby. And in the same breath, he informed me that he had concluded arrangement for me to travel to London to shop for all I would need for the baby and the wedding. He told me that his Aunty living in London had been informed by phone to assist me in buying the right things.

True to his promise, I was driven to the airport a week later on the first step of my trip to London. I did not anticipate any problem since Joseph had arranged everything. But unknown to me, trouble was lurking around the corner. I had passed all the security checks and was waiting for my turn to enter the aircraft when a smartly dressed young lady walked briskly up to me and asked me to step aside.

Not desirous to make a scene, I complied. She took me to what looked like an interrogation room and identified herself as an agent of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA. She told me she had information that I was carrying narcotic drugs on my person, adding that she had been authorised to search me, beginning with my vanity bag which I was carrying at the time.

She then emptied the contents of the bag on a table. And after sorting through them, she came up with a little packet wrapped in cellophane which she then proceeded to unwrap, sniffing at the content at the same time. “Where did you get this from?” she queried. I was too dumfounded for words.

That was how I was arrested and detained in an NDLEA cell for the past three months, awaiting trial. The first month was the most traumatic for me. I was interrogated days on end by different officers all wanting me to identify the baron that I was supposed to work for as a drug courier and the source of the drugs. My repeated denials obviously did not impress them as they appeared convinced they had a water-tight case against me.

Joseph had visited me three times since the beginning of my confinement. And on each visit, he would assure me that “the family” was doing something to get me out of what he called my “messy jam”. His fourth visit a month later was even less cheering. Unlike his previous visits, he was clearly ill-at-ease. And for the first time I found him stuttering.

His message was short as it was painfully sharp like a butcher’s knife. His family, he said, was getting increasingly disturbed by the bad image my drug scandal was giving it and its businesses. And that he had been pressured to call off our engagement and planned wedding.. He paused and then muttered an emotion-choked: “I’m sorry, Mary”. Then he left, and with him the only silver lining on my darkening horizon.

Recalling all these was self-torture, I know. But the Christmas carol, “Mary’s Boy Child”, had a soothing effect on my frayed nerves and hurt feelings. I was lost in the lyrics of that song when the cell door opened, admitting an agent who invited me to the interrogation room. Anticipating another interminable interrogation session, I entered the room with great trepidation and reluctance.

Sitting on the interrogator’s chair this time was the one they called Hassan, ever smiling, ever polite. “I have good news for you, Madam,” he began. “We presently have incontrovertible evidence based on our investigations that the drug found in your bag at the airport was planted there by some persons in conspiracy with our agent who arrested you. They have all been arrested and have made confessional statements. So, you will be free to leave here two days after we have finished processing your release papers,” he told me.

Two days? It was two days to Christmas, was the first thought that came to my mind. “You mean I will be released on Christmas Day?” I asked him. “As a matter of fact, you may leave here on the morning of Christmas Day,” he said.

But on the morning of Christmas Day I went into premature labour. And by the time I was rushed to the nearby clinic and maternity home, I had given birth to a baby boy. A few hours after my delivery, the matron, who apparently is a Catholic sister going by her mode of dressing, walked over to my bed at the maternity ward and reminded me of the necessity of christening my baby Emmanuel.

“By the way, what is the name of the father?” she asked me. “Joseph,” I told her. “And you are Mary. What a blessed coincidence,” she noted. She did the sign of the cross over the baby and said: “God bless, guide and protect you my child”.

Then she left me with my Christmas bundle of Joy.

*Mike Ebonugwo is the Features Editor of Vanguard Newspapers